Cederick D. Patterson, 40, of Warren, facing a charge of murder, waits for the prosecution and defense to confer with Judge Ronald J. Rice during his jury trial Tuesday morning at the Trumbull County Common Pleas Court.

WARREN — Jurors hearing the case of Cedrick D. Patterson, accused of murder and other charges, on Tuesday heard from a woman whose apartment was the scene of the December 2021 fatal shooting of a 51-year-old Warren man.

Patterson, 40, of Warren, is accused of killing Bernard Owens, 51, somewhere in the complex at 250 Tod Ave. NW. just before 11 a.m. Dec. 1. He also is charged with carrying a gun in three other incidents on Nov. 18, Nov. 21 and Nov. 28.

Two witnesses from the Bureau of Criminal Investigation are slated to testify this morning for the state. The defense, led by attorney Mary Ellen Ditchey, may also call witnesses today. Common Pleas Judge Ronald J. Rice at the beginning of the trial said he anticipated the jury would be deliberating by this afternoon.

On Tuesday, Tamiah Bady of Warren testified that on Dec. 1, she and Patterson were in her apartment when she answered a phone call from Owens, who wanted $400 he was owed for drugs he had sold to Bady. She said the call was on speaker, and Patterson, who was under the influence at the time, said to Owens, “come get it in blood.”

Bady said she met Owens on the elevator to keep him from coming into her apartment. She had intended to get her bank card from another person and withdraw the $400, but when that person didn’t answer her calls, she and Owens went back to her apartment on the ninth floor, she said.

When she went into her bedroom to get her I.D. so she could go to the bank, Patterson and Owens “had words,” and a few minutes later she heard a gunshot. She testified that she did not see what happened, but Patterson told her that he shot Owens.

Bady testified that after the shooting, she feared for her safety and dropped some live bullets into a bathroom toilet.

Jurors watched video footage from an apartment doorbell camera from Dec. 1, that showed a man who was bleeding walking by. Kamal Rahim, who had an apartment in the building at the time and provided the video to law enforcement, testified that the man shown was “Bernard.” Rahim said that while he was staying somewhere else at the time, his phone had alerted him and woke him up when the doorbell camera turned on that night.

The state also played video footage from Rahim’s doorbell camera that corresponded with the Nov. 28, 2021, incident that showed someone outside the apartment with a handgun. Rahim identified the person with the gun as Patterson.

OFFICERS TESTIFY

Detective John Greaver and officer David Weber, longtime Warren police officers who responded to the Dec. 1 shooting, both testified that they saw a large amount of blood in an elevator shortly after arriving in the lobby of 250 Tod Ave. and were told that a gunshot victim was on the fourth floor of the building. Weber said when he arrived on the fourth floor, Owens was dead. He was directed to the ninth floor, and found that a blood trail began in the stairwell on the seventh floor and continued up to apartment 907, where he spoke to Bady then found Patterson, who appeared to be asleep in a bedroom with a cigarette in his mouth.

Trumbull County Assistant Prosecutors Christopher Becker and Ryan Sanders showed jurors excerpts from a two-hour video of Greaver questioning Patterson, much of which was difficult to hear due to poor audio. Patterson appears to be emotional throughout the video and seems to mention that Owens had been aggressive with Bady.

Jurors were shown photos from the autopsy of Owens and heard testimony by Dr. George Sterbenz, a forensic pathologist with the Trumbull County Coroner’s Office. They also heard from Warren police officers Phillip Sajnovsky and Brian Crites.

Ditchey in her opening statement Monday admitted Patterson shot Owens, but said it was during a life-and-death struggle in which Patterson took a gun away from Owens.

Tuesday during cross-examinations, Ditchey pointed out that the prosecution’s only evidence that it wasn’t Owens who brought the gun was that Owens didn’t appear to have a weapon in elevator video footage, but that it was winter and he was wearing bulky clothes that could have easily hidden a firearm. She also revealed that while bullets for a 380-caliber gun — they type of weapon that killed Owens — were found in Patterson’s apartment, a gun of the same caliber had been taken from him during an earlier encounter with law enforcement.

In addition to the murder charge with a firearm specification, Patterson is facing charges of four counts of having weapons while not allowed, tampering with evidence, felonious assault with a firearm specification and carrying concealed weapons.